Wireless communication networks are widely deployed to provide various communication services such as voice, video, packet data, messaging, broadcast, etc. These wireless networks may be multiple-access networks capable of supporting multiple users by sharing the available network resources. Examples of such multiple-access networks include Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) networks, Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) networks, Frequency Division Multiple Access (FDMA) networks, Orthogonal FDMA (OFDMA) networks, and Single-Carrier FDMA (SC-FDMA) networks.
A wireless communication network may include a number of base stations (e.g., eNodeBs) that can support communication for a number of user equipments (UEs). A UE may communicate with a base station via the downlink and uplink. The downlink (or forward link) refers to the communication link from the base station to the UE, and the uplink (or reverse link) refers to the communication link from the UE to the base station.
Additionally, UEs can be equipped to communicate in wireless local area networks (WLAN) by accessing one or more hotspots using a wireless communication technology, such as 802.11 (WiFi). In this regard, a UE can communicate with a radio access network (RAN) of a wireless wide area network (WWAN) (e.g., a cellular network) along with a RAN of one or more WLANs. The UE can include a receiver operable for communicating with the RAN of the WWAN (e.g., a long term evolution (LTE), universal telecommunications mobile system (UMTS), or similar receiver) and another receiver operable for communicating with the RAN of the WLAN (e.g., an 802.11 WiFi receiver). The UE may additionally or alternatively include a single receiver operable for communicating with both RANs. In either case, the UE can communicate with the WWAN and WLAN to provide simultaneous access to one or more network nodes, to offload traffic from the WWAN to WLAN or vice versa, and/or the like.
In another configuration, traffic aggregation can be implemented to allow the UE to communicate with the WWAN over the RAN and also using the WLAN RAN. The UE can communicate with an eNodeB of the WWAN RAN to access the WWAN as well as a WLAN access point of the WLAN RAN, which can communicate with the eNodeB to provide access to the wireless network. This configuration can provide increased throughput for the UE on the WWAN. Upper layers of the UE may be agnostic to this configuration, and thus implementation of traffic aggregation may cause inconsistencies in policies specified for WLAN (e.g., access network discovery and selection function (ANDSF) policies, etc.).